Short Fiction

out his hand, “OK, if that’s what you want to do. I’ll bank your half in the First Martian back on Earth. Leave my address there. Might want to get in touch with me some time.”

Meek gripped his hand. “You don’t need to do that. Take all of it. Just see the plant’s fixed up.”

Stiffy’s eyes shone queerly, moistly in the starlight. “Shucks, there’s enough for both of us. More than enough.” His voice was rough. “Now get along with you.”

Meek started to walk away.

“Goodbye, Stiffy,” he called.

“So long,” Stiffy shouted.

Meek hesitated. It seemed there should have been more he could have said. Some way to let Stiffy know he liked him. Some way to tell him he was a friend in a life which had known few friends.

He tried to think of ways to put what he felt in words, but there wasn’t any way, none that didn’t sound awkward and sentimental.

He wheeled about, headed for the space port. His feet went faster and faster, until finally he was running.

He had to get out of here, he told himself, before he got into another jam. His luck was stretched too thin already. A fellow just couldn’t go on having luck like that.

And besides, there was all of space to roam in, other places to see. That was what he had set out to do. To see the Solar System in his own ship, to do all the things he’d dreamed about back in the cubby hole at Lunar Exports, Inc.

And he was going to do just that, he promised himself. Although he hoped the next stop would be more peaceable.

Oliver Meek sighed happily⁠—this was the life.

Mr. Meek Plays Polo

I

The sign read:

Atomic Motors Repaired. Busted Plates Patched Up. Rocket Tubes Relined. Wheeze In, Whiz Out!

It added, as an afterthought, in shaky, inexpert lettering:

We Fix Anything.

Mr. Oliver Meek stared owlishly at the sign, which hung from an arm attached to a metal standard sunk in solid rock. A second sign was wired to the standard just below the metal arm, but its legend was faint, almost illegible. Meek blinked at it through thick-lensed spectacles, finally deciphered its scrawl:

Ask About Educated Bugs.

A bit bewildered, but determined not to show it, Meek swung away from the signpost and gravely regarded the settlement. On the chart it was indicated by a fairly sizeable dot, but that was merely a matter of comparison. Out Saturn-way even the tiniest outpost assumes importance far beyond its size.

The slab of rock was no more than five miles across, perhaps even less. Here in its approximate center, were two buildings, both of almost identical construction, semi-spherical and metal. Out here, Meek realized, shelter was the thing. Architecture merely for architecture’s sake was still a long way off.

One of the buildings was the repair shop which the sign advertised. The other, according to the crudely painted legend smeared above its entrance lock, was the “Saturn Inn.”

The rest of the rock was landing field, pure and simple. Blasters had leveled off the humps and irregularities so spaceships could sit down.

Two ships now were on the field, pulled up close against the repair shop. One, Meek noticed, belonged to the Solar Health and Welfare Department, the other to the Galactic Pharmaceutical Corporation. The Galactic ship was a freighter, ponderous and slow. It was here, Meek knew, to take on a cargo of radiation moss. But the other was a puzzler. Meek wrinkled his brow and blinked his eyes, trying to figure out what a welfare ship would be doing in this remote corner of the Solar System.

Slowly and carefully, Meek clumped toward the squat repair shop. Once or twice he stumbled, hoping fervently he wouldn’t get the feet of his cumbersome spacesuit all tangled up. The gravity was slight, next to nonexistent, and one who wasn’t used to it had to take things easy and remember where he was.

Behind him Saturn filled a tenth of the sky, a yellow, lemon-tinged ball, streaked here and there with faint crimson lines and blotched with angry, bright green patches.

To right and left glinted the whirling, twisting, tumbling rocks that made up the Inner Ring, while arcing above the horizon opposed to Saturn were the spangled glistening rainbows of the other rings.

“Like dewdrops in the black of space,” Meek mumbled to himself. But he immediately felt ashamed of himself for growing poetic. This sector of space, he knew, was not in the least poetic. It was hard and savage and as he thought about that, he hitched up his gun belt and struck out with a firmer tread that almost upset him. After that, he tried to think of nothing except keeping his two feet under him.

Reaching the repair shop’s entrance lock, he braced himself solidly to keep his balance, reached out and pressed a buzzer. Swiftly the lock spun outward and a moment later Meek had passed through the entrance vault and stepped into the office.

A dungareed mechanic sat tilted in a chair against a wall, feet on the desk, a greasy cap pushed back on his head.

Meek stamped his feet gratefully, pleased at feeling Earth gravity under him again. He lifted the hinged helmet of his suit back on his shoulders.

“You are the gentleman who can fix things?” he asked the mechanic.

---

The mechanic stared. Here was no hell-for-leather freighter pilot, no bewhiskered roamer of the outer orbits. Meek’s hair was white and stuck out in uncombed tufts in a dozen directions. His skin was pale. His blue eyes looked watery behind the thick lenses that rode his nose. Even the bulky spacesuit failed to hide his stooped shoulders and slight frame.

The mechanic said nothing.

Meek tried again. “I saw the sign. It said you could fix anything. So I.⁠ ⁠…”

The mechanic shook himself.

“Sure,” he agreed, still slightly dazed. “Sure I can fix you up. What you got?”

He swung his feet off the desk.

“I ran into a swarm of pebbles,” Meek confessed. “Not much